Don Bullis - Bloodville

Bloodville
“Go ahead!” Bud Rice bellowed. His voice shook with anger. “I don’t
give a damn!”
The first shot missed. A second quickly followed and it missed, too.
A spasm of hope swept over the storekeeper as the bullets whizzed
passed
his head. Maybe he’d live.... But no! A third slug tore through his
neck.
So did a fourth and a fifth. The merchant’s hard gray eyes revealed
nothing—not
fear, nor rage, nor pain—as bullets ripped his fragile flesh. Blood,
bone
and tissue erupted from the back of his neck and splattered the trading
post wall. The slugs drove him backward by a half step before his knees
buckled and he dropped to the floor. He lay there, unmoving, as his
carotid
artery spurted blood like a fountain for a few seconds. Then his heart
stopped pumping.
Two gray-haired women watched from the end of the counter, near the
cash drawer. The older woman, immobilized by shock and fear, screamed
something
the killer didn’t understand—his ears rang from the crash of the gun’s
reports—and she raised her arms to cover her eyes, as if not seeing the
killer would make him go away. She took a step backward. The gunman
fired
two quick shots and nine-millimeter bullets ripped holes in her chest
and
neck. She staggered, then fell, her face a mask of hopeless surrender
to
death. The woman lay still as blood pooled around her body and soaked
into
her housedress. She lived another thirty seconds before life left her.
The younger woman ran away and hid.
The killer blew smoke from the pistol’s barrel as he’d seen bad guys
do in western movies. He followed the second woman through a door at
the
rear of the Budville Trading Post, a door that led to the Rice living
quarters.

Housed in a white, one story, cement block building with a low
pitched
roof, the trading post sat behind a wide gravel driveway and gas pump
island
thirty feet from the shoulder of U. S. Route 66. Two large windows and
two smaller ones, all trimmed in red, were spaced equally on either
side
of a heavy Dutch door. A big red and white sign that read

BUDVILLE

Trading Company

rested on two vertical iron pipes twelve feet high and perpendicular to
the road. The tallest structure in the village, Rice’s sign was visible
for a half mile in either direction on Route 66 and from the Cubero
Road,
too.
The trading company Bud Rice operated con-sisted of a small grocery
store, Phillips 66 gas station, wrecker service, auto salvage yard and
auto repair garage. Rice also owned the local New Mexico Motor Vehicle
Department concession and he contracted with Continental Trailways to
sell
bus tickets. Bud dealt in Indian pawn jewelry on the side, but that
business
had fallen off in recent years because he’d cheated so many Indians
that
few would entrust their pawn to him. He also dabbled in real estate and
owned assorted small business and residential rental properties. Until
a few years before, he’d served as Justice of the Peace and on the day
he died he carried a Valencia County deputy’s commission given to him
by
Sheriff Jack Elkins and an honorary State Police badge given to him by
Deputy Chief Charlie Scarberry.
Local legend held that Bud Rice made a million dollars off the tourists
on Route 66—known locally as the Old Road—and that he kept large
amounts
of cash stashed around the trading post. Everyone acquainted with him
knew
he carried a big roll of currency in his right front pants pocket. He
never
flashed it but he wasn't shy about peeling off a ten-spot to pay for a
nickel pack of Black Jack chewing gum either.
Rice prided himself on knowing the first name of every police
officer—tribal,
municipal or state—and sheriff's deputy in Valencia County. He also had
a close friend in Santa Fe in the person of State Police Lieutenant
Colonel,
and Deputy Chief, Charles Scarberry. They’d become friends fifteen
years
before as a result of a common interest. Money. For many years the
State
of New Mexico paid Justice of the Peace Bud Rice five dollars for every
traffic violator he adjudged guilty and fined. He customarily shared
the
bounty with police officers who brought miscreants before his petit
court.
Deputy Chief Scarberry, as a young patrolman, delivered hundreds of
traffic
violators to Bud Rice. The conviction rate in the Budville J. P. Court,
year after year, stood at exactly one hundred percent.
Rice had another reason for getting along with deputy sheriffs and
State Police officers: he depended on them to call him to auto
accidents
for wrecker service and to tip him off when they spotted cars abandoned
along the Old Road. Envelopes containing cash rewards passed from Bud
Rice
to grateful, and poorly paid, State Police officers. As things worked
out,
Bud towed more automobiles and semi trucks than either of his two
competitors:
one in Grants, 25 miles west, and the other at Rio Puerco, 35 miles
east.
He did more towing and stored more cars than the two of them combined.
Bud and his wife, Flossie, lived in comfortable quarters built on to
the back of the store. Nettie Buckley, Flossie's close friend and
housekeeper,
lived in one small house on the Rice property and an eighty-year-old
retired
school teacher, Blanche Brown, who worked part-time in the store, lived
in another. Customers and visitors would find the three women together
in the store or in Flossie’s kitchen at almost any time of the day or
night.
Local folks who didn’t like Bud still stopped by for coffee with
Flossie,
Nettie and Miss Brown.

Bus driver Cody Miles turned his Continental Trailways Scenicruiser
off Interstate 40 onto Route 66 at the Laguna Pueblo Indian Reservation
exit, six miles east of Budville, at 7:40 on the evening of Saturday,
November
18, 1967. Seven minutes later the bus crossed the Reservation’s west
boundary,
which also served as Budville's east limit. A sign at that point read
SPEED
LIMIT 50.
Miles blew a blast on the air horn as he passed between the new yellow
brick Mormon Church to his right and the rickety old whitewashed adobe
Baptist Mission School to the left. He liked to let Flossie and Miss
Brown
know he was coming. It gave them half a minute to shoo
passengers—usually
Indians going to Grants—out of the store and into the chill of the
autumn
night.
A pickup truck pulled onto the roadway from the trading post parking
lot and headed east toward Albuquerque, fifty-five miles away. Cody
Miles
later remembered the truck as scrap-iron mounted on wheels. A '46 or
'47
Ford, he guessed, dark blue or black except the right door and right
front
fender were light colored. It didn't have a license plate that he could
see, and a single tail light glowed dim gray, the red lens long since
broken
out and gone. Indian Cadillac, the bus driver said to himself. Old
Indian
Cadillac.
Rice's two wreckers—the blue and white Peterbilt behemoth he used for
towing semi trucks and the smaller red GMC he used for cars and
pickups—occupied
an otherwise empty trading post driveway.
The bus didn't stop in Budville that night. Dark inside and out, except
for the two gas pump globes that provided meager yellow illumination,
the
store appeared closed for business and no one stood under the sign
which
read Bus Depot. Miles thought it odd. Rice usually stayed open until
eight
o'clock or later, even when traffic volume declined in the fall and
winter
months.
It pleased Cody Miles to think some of the ill-mannered arrogance had
been taken out of Bud Rice when the merchant lost his final court
battle
to keep Interstate Highway 40 from bypassing Budville. The new
four-lane
highway was com-plete and open to traffic from Albuquerque to Gallup
except
for ten miles of the old two-lane Route 66 from Laguna Pueblo to the
Los
Cerritos Trading Post; the stretch that passed through Budville. By use
of frivolous lawsuits and politi-cal chicanery Bud Rice had stalled
completion
of the Interstate road for seven years, but in the early fall of 1967,
construction crews began work on the final section of I-40 where it
climbed
the side of Flower Mesa a half mile south of Budville.
Miles didn't like Bud Rice. Few people did. Rice worked at being as
dog-mean and nasty as the pit bull terriers he kept in the salvage yard
behind his store, and he didn't care whether Cody Miles liked him or
not.
He didn't care whether anyone liked him or not, and he in turn, didn't
have regard for many people. Apart from police officers and sheriff's
deputies,
Bud counted few men as friends.
The bus cruised slowly through the tiny town. Miles later recalled
seeing two cars in front of Dixie’s Place—a rundown old tourist trap
and
saloon diagonally across the road from the Bud’s Trading Post—and the
dirt
parking lot outside the King Cafe & Bar at the west town limit was
empty. The bus accelerated as it left Budville and soon rolled along
the
Old Road at seventy-five miles per hour, passing through Villa de
Cubero
and Los Cerritos. At the bottom of a sharp little hill just east of the
Chief Rancho Motel, the driver saw red lights flashing on the road
ahead.
He slowed to fifty-five before passing a State Police car and a
Corvette
with Texas plates pulled off on the road’s shoulder. A uniformed
officer
leaned on the open driver's door of the black and white Plymouth police
cruiser and two other officers stood illuminated in the car's
headlights.
No one’s safe from the cops, Miles muttered to himself.

Senior State Police Officer Troy McGee watched two rookies as they
worked
at filling out a standard traffic citation form. Fresh from recruit
school,
it took them twice as long to write a ticket as it would have taken
him.
He didn't mind much. The workday was about over. When they finished
with
the Texan, he'd be on his way home.
What he heard on his police radio startled him.
“Troy! Troy! Bud Rice just got shot! You hear me, Troy? Dead! Shot
dead! At the trading post! You hear me, Troy?! Troy! Answer me!”
No radio procedure. No ten-code. Debbie Smith, the State Police
dispatcher in Gallup, sim-ply screamed hysterically over the air waves.
McGee reached inside and snatched the microphone from its dashboard
clip.
Violations of procedure bothered him.
“One-nine-nine Gallup. 10-9.” He said it sternly.
“Bud Rice got shot!” Debbie shrieked.
“One-nine-nine Gallup. Did I copy right? Bud Rice got shot?”
“Yes! Yes! Five minutes ago. Flossie thinks he's dead.”
“One-nine-nine Gallup. We was just there.”
“I know! Go back! Go back!”
“10-4 Gallup. Show us en route to the scene at this time.”
The taller of the rookies, Bobby Gutierrez, walked toward the driver's
door of the Corvette. The stocky one, an Indian from nearby Acoma
Pueblo,
Juan Posey, took a backup position at the right rear of the sports car.
“Forget the ticket,” McGee yelled. “Get in! Get in! We got a shooting
call. Let's go! Let's go!”
McGee backed off the road to his right and the two young officers
jumped
into the moving car. The Plymouth fishtailed wildly when McGee slammed
the transmission selector into “drive” and smashed the accelerator
pedal
hard against the floorboard. The big V-8 engine strained at its mounts
as the officer completed his turn back to the east. The car's wheels
dug
into the soft shoulder and showered the Corvette with gravel, dirt and
dead grass; the tires screeched and smoked white when spinning rubber
met
hard pavement. Budville was six miles away.
The dispatcher's log showed the time: 1955 hours.
Sounding closer to normal, Debbie Smith's voice came back on the radio.
“Gallup one-nine-nine.”
“One-nine-nine. Go ahead Gallup.”
“Further on Bud Rice. Suspect vehicle is a light colored sedan. Make
and model unknown. Direction of travel unknown. 10-4?”
“10-4, Gallup. Contact Sergeant North. We need 10-72s at the Rio Puerco
Bridge and the east city limits at Grants. ID all drivers of light
colored
sedans and other suspicious vehicles. 10-33.”
“10-4 one-nine-nine.”
“Damn, Troy,” Gutierrez shouted over the wail of the siren, “that's
going pretty far, ain't it? Setting up roadblocks before we even know
what
happened?”
“Sergeant better do it, too,” McGee yelled. “Bud Rice is a good old
buddy of Chief Charlie Scarberry. You get my meaning, Bobby?”
The rookie nodded emphatically.
McGee hoped, silently prayed, the call would turn out to be bogus,
that everything would be 10-4 once he got to Budville. Things often
worked
out that way. But Debbie Smith's uncharacteristic violation of radio
procedure
told him that everything was not all right in Budville. The Plymouth
roared
along at a hundred and twenty miles an hour and didn't pass a single
light
colored sedan.
The State Police car slid sideways to a rocking stop in the trading
post parking lot between the road and the faded red gas pumps, sending
up a brown cloud of dirt and dust as the engine stalled. The three
officers
deployed quickly. Posey took cover behind a gas pump and Bobby
Gutierrez
ducked behind the Plymouth's left front fender. Both leveled .357
magnum
Smith & Wes-son revolvers at the trading post entrance. McGee
dashed
toward the building. The store's windows were brightly lit and the
place
looked open for business. McGee tried the doorknob. Locked. He knocked
loudly with his gun butt and then waved his left arm in both directions
as if directing traffic. Posey dashed to the corner of the building and
crouched down. He used his flashlight to probe the darkness beyond a
low
wall and out toward an oldfashioned wooden windmill tower and water
tank,
and the desert beyond. Nothing moved. No one there. Gutierrez ran
quickly
to the garage at the east end of the store and took cover in the
doorway.
A padlock secured the building.
No one checked around back, in the junkyard. No need. The pit bulls
stood guard there.
Nettie Buckley unlocked the store’s front door and the officers nearly
knocked the feeble housekeeper off her feet as they charged inside,
guns
at the ready. They took up positions never taught in any police
academy.
The three of them simply stood in the center of the room, back to back,
sweating, while Nettie disappeared meekly into the living quarters like
a little gray ghost. The store was quiet and seemed deserted. McGee
smelled
burnt gunpowder. He saw spent car-tridge casings on the floor.
“Flossie,” he called, scared deep in his guts at what he'd see when
she answered. Five seconds passed.
“Over here,” Flossie said in little more than a loud whisper. “Over
here, Troy.”
McGee took a step toward the voice before he saw her, down on her knees
behind the glass-topped counter, beside the body of her husband. She
held
his lifeless hand in hers. Bud’s neck, a torn mass of ripped flesh and
gore, oozed his life’s blood into a large irregular pool that spread
out
around his head and shoulders and soaked into his clothing and into
hers.
The fluid glistened dark red/black and wet in the glare of overhead
fluorescent
lights. Death closed Bud's eyes but his mouth remained open, as if he
had
one more thing he wanted to say.
“He killed him, Troy. Just shot him down.” Flossie's voice quavered
and her words came slowly, but she didn’t cry. “And Miss Brown. Shot
her
too. Why would he do that, Troy?”
“Where’s she at, Flossie?” Troy asked more forcefully than he intended.
“He drug her in the living room.”
McGee nodded his head toward Posey and then the living quarters before
he knelt down beside Flossie Rice but away from the blood. He'd known
her
since the State Police assigned him to the patrol area east out of
Grants
five years before. He wanted to comfort her, wanted to make things
better.
He knew, though, that he could not.
Officer Juan Posey disappeared through a door between the store
and the living quarters. He returned in a few seconds and leaned on the
end of the counter, his dark face frowning, his head bowed.
“She's dead too, Troy. Shot in the head, looks like. There's blood
all over the place back here.” The young Indian’s face was impassive.
“I
liked her,” he said.
Officer Bobby Gutierrez walked outside, quickly, to the corner of the
building and over the wall by the windmill. He vomited mightily. He,
McGee
and Posey had visited with Bud and Miss Brown not an hour before.
They'd
stopped at the trading post after supper at Scottie's Cafe.
Gutierrez slowly returned to the store. He and Posey stood looking
at the floor, doing nothing and staying as far away from the body of
Bud
Rice as they could and still be indoors. There was something about the
room neither of them liked and neither could identify as the cloying,
sickening,
miasma of fresh human blood. A lot of it. And death.
“Who done it, Flossie?” McGee said gently. “Who killed ‘em?”
She gripped her husband's hand tightly in both of hers. “I never seen
him before, Troy. I thought he'd kill me too. He pointed that gun right
at me and he poked me with it too. Just kept poking me.”
“What'd he look like?”
“I don't know. Bud fought him.” She tilted her head and looked
wistfully
at her dead husband, her long face ashen and down at its corners, a
look
of grief in her gray, uncrying, eyes. She looked up at Troy. “His shirt
was ripped open. Bud did that, I guess. I seen a mark on his belly,
like
a tattoo. Like a bird, maybe. He had on a black jacket.”
McGee stood. “Bobby, get on the car radio and call Gallup. Tell 'em
we need ambulances and all the backup they can find and get us some
criminal
agents out here. Check on them 10-72s I requested. Tell ‘em to watch
for
a guy in a black jacket with a torn shirt and a tattoo on his belly.
Posey,
you guard the crime scene. I don't want nobody to touch nothing 'til
the
criminal agents get here. Nobody! Got that?”
Posey nodded, not at all sure what McGee expected of him.
McGee took Flossie firmly by the elbow and helped her stand.
“Let's go outside. Get some fresh air.” She held back, reluctant to
leave.
“Come on Flossie. There isn't nothing you can do in here and we need to
make sure nothing's disturbed. Maybe it'll help catch whoever done it.”
She stood slowly. “Bud was a tough guy, Troy, and you know it too.
He fought all his life. This time he got killed for it. But Miss Brown.
Why shoot her? She never hurt a soul in her life. It don't make no
sense,
Troy. No sense at all.”

Word of the Budville murders spread quickly to law enforcement
people
all over northwestern New Mexico. Valencia County Sheriff Jack Elkins
heard
Debbie Smith’s hysterical broadcast as he scanned radio channels and he
soon hurried along State Road 6 on his way to the scene, fifty miles
west
of the county seat at Los Lunas.
The Sheriff had made the same trip under similar circumstances only
three months before, on the night Decillano “Speedy” Montaño
died
in the dirt, shot to pieces from ambush near the village of Cubero.
Elkins
had a suspect in custody, but not much would likely come of it. A nasty
business, Elkins thought, but ol’ Speedy was the local bully and he
probably
had it coming. The murder rate in and around Budville seemed on the
rise.
Troy McGee’s supervisor, Sergeant Al North, and District Attorney's
investigator Jim Mitchell sat drinking coffee in the Franciscan Cafe in
Grants when North got word of the murders and a request for roadblocks
by way of a phone call from Debbie Smith. North took the time to call
his
boss, Lieutenant Morris Candelaria in Gallup, before he and Mitchell
set
out for Budville at a high rate of speed.
Candelaria called Debbie Smith and ordered her to order roadblocks
on major roads. Then he called his boss, the deputy chief of the State
Police, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Scarberry at his home near Santa Fe.
Candelaria despised the deputy chief almost as much as he hated his job
as commander of the Gallup State Police district. He correctly blamed
Scarberry
for the assignment. Candelaria called the deputy chief “Old Gooseberry”
behind his back. Even so, he did his job. No one could accuse Morris
Candelaria
of allowing personal feelings to interfere with professional
obligation.
Chief Scarberry called the Special Operations Unit duty sergeant and
ordered the State Police helicopter readied for a flight to Budville.
Then
he called Captain Mateo “Mat” Torrez, commander of the State Police
Criminal
Investigations Division at his home in Albuquerque.
“Torrez,” he shouted into the mouthpiece, “Bud Rice got shot a little
while ago. Murdered! I want every son-of-a-bitch in the State Police
workin’
on it and I won't rest ‘til I see the bastard that done it dead or in
jail.
Preferably dead. You got that? And I want every swingin’ dick agent in
Criminal, Narcotics, Special Investigations and Intelligence, and every
uniform in Gallup, Grants, Santa Fe and Albuquerque workin’ on it. All
leave and days off is canceled! You understand me, Torrez? And I want
to
see your brown ass in Budville in an hour.” He slammed down the phone
without
waiting for comment.
Mat Torrez, half asleep, had not said a word after “hello.”
Scarberry brooded over the news. Tears wet his cheeks and his breath
caught in his chest as he dressed in his headquarters command uniform.
The Deputy Chief never in his life had a better friend than Bud Rice
and
it grieved him to know he’d never talk to the man again. He’d miss
sharing
mutual contempt for lesser men and tourists with old Bud, miss
splitting
a pint bottle of bourbon and getting drunk in the old garage out back
of
the trading post while Bud’s pit bulls romped in the dirt nearby. He
thought
about Flossie, fondly, and wondered if she was all right. Cande-laria
hadn't
said. The deputy chief's mind raced. Who’d do it? And how? A hell of a
lot of people didn’t like Bud—hated his guts, truth be told—but Bud
kept
a gun handy and viewed strangers with a wary eye. Robbery? Bud would
fight
back. He wouldn't give up a nickel without a struggle. But what if it
was
something else? Bud, Scarberry remembered, had testified for the FBI in
a narcotics trafficking trial in Texas only a week before. Or what if
some
Indian with a snootful of Twister went on the warpath? He remembered a
time fifteen years before when State Police officer Nash Garcia died
under
circumstances just like that, ambushed and shot by drunk Acoma Indians.
It didn't seem possible that a tough old hide like Bud Rice could be
murdered,
shot down like any ordinary man. As Deputy Chief, Scarberry would take
personal command and bring the matter to a rapid conclusion. Nobody
could
kill a friend of his, and a friend of the New Mexico State Police, and
get away with it. He vowed to himself that he’d do whatever it took to
avenge the untimely passing of Bud Rice.

The State Police helicopter landed on the Cubero Elementary School
playground,
a mile from Budville, in a circle of light made by the headlamps of
eight
police cars. The pilot’s log read 2200 hours. ...